Your Dog Rescue Stories

Thursday, September 08, 2011

Disney's Talking Dogs: The Buddies Are Back!

One of the many treats at this year's BlogPaws conference was a first ever, private screening of the new Disney movie, Spooky Buddies, that will be released "direct-to-video" on September 20. How can you beat adorable talking puppies for a pet blogging conference? And the BlogPaws and Disney folks pulled out all the stops, turning the ballroom into a movie theater, complete with red velvet rope and loads of popcorn and soft drinks!

But the really cool part is that Robert Vince, the director, writer and producer of this movie, and in fact the entire franchise (including Air Bud,Air Buddies, Snow Buddies,Space Buddies and more) was there to introduce his latest canine caper and do a question and answer session following the movie.

Did he spill the beans about all the special tricks he uses when working with animals? Well, not exactly, but he did say that there are "over 1500 visual effects in this movie" alone, and that in his opinion "casting voices is harder than casting actors." But there was one secret revealed: there will be a cat in the next Buddies movie! Parental Unit said she thoroughly enjoyed this film, but as you might guess, she's not one to complain about any movie with talking animals.

Now, there are five puppy "buddies" in this particular movie, a quintet of Golden Retrievers, and an audience member had the smarts to ask him if the puppies had "stand -ins" in case they got tired or cranky. What do you think his answer was? Did they have puppy stand-ins, and if so, how many for each puppy? Why not take a guess in your comments and we'll let you know the correct answer in tomorrow's post. Hint: we were surprised!

And Mr. Vince was kind enough to pose for photos with us and their gigantic stuffed "Buddies".
Doesn't Parental Unit look like an excited kid, despite (or perhaps due to) having the worst haircut of her life before the conference...?